our mothers wrung hell and hardtack from row and boll. fenced others’ gardens with bones of lovers. embarking from Africa in chains reluctant pilgrims stolen by Jehovah’s light planted here the bitter seed of blight and here eternal torches mark the shame of Moloch’s mansions built in slavery’s name. our hungered eyes do see/refuse the […]
learn moreYou are disdainful and magnificant–
Your perfect body and your pompous gait,
Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate,
Small wonder that you are incompetent
To imitate those whom you so despise–
Your sholders towering high above the throng,
Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song,
Palm trees and mangoes stretched before your eyes.
Let others toil and sweat for labor’s sake
And wring from grasping hands their meed of gold.
Why urge ahead your supercilious feet?
Scorn will efface each footprint that you make.
I love your laughter arrogant and bold.
You are too splendid for
They shall go down unto life’s Borderland,
Walk unafraid within that Living Hell,
Nor heed the driving rain of shot and shell
That round them falls; but with uplifted hand
Be one with mighty hosts, an armed band
Against man’s wrong to man-for such full well
They know. And from their trembling lips shall swell
A song of hope the world can understand
All this to them shall be a glorious sign,
A glimmer of that resurrection morn
When age-long faith, crowned with a grace benign,
Shall rise and from their brows cast down the thorn
Of prejudice.
Where are we to go when this is done?
Will we slip into old, accustomed ways,
finding remembered notches, one by one?
Thrashing a hapless way through quickening haze?
Who is to know us when the end has come?
Old friends and families, but could we be strange
to the sight and stricken dumb at visions of some pulsing memory?
Who will love us for what we used to be
who now are what we are, bitter or cold?
Who is to nurse us with swift subtlety
back to the warm and feeling human fold?
Where are we to go when this is through?
We are the war-born.
He came in silvern armour, trimmed with black-A lover come from legends long ago-With silver spurs and silken plumes a-blow,
And flashing sword caught fast and buckled back In a craven sheath of Tamarack.
He came with footsteps beautifully slow, And spoke in voice meticulously low.
He came and romance followed his track….
I did not ask his name-I thought him Love; I did not care to see his hidden face.
All life seemed born in my intaken breath; All thought seemed flown like some forgotten dove.
I had no thoughts of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florist shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garnish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that god has made,-
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now-unwittingly, you’ve made me d
learn more
